“It wassupposedto be, but neither of them seem to be able to remember that. Pair of tossers.”
“Hey, Amanda, you think you could pass us that blanket?”
She kept ranting, launching into this whole thing about how her mom was mad at her dad for a supposed affair, but howshe’dbeen having an affair, too, and they were both as bad as each other—but she did take pity on us and passed me the blanket I’d pointed to, turning her back to give us a little privacy while Noah and I wrapped the blankets around ourselves and gathered up our clothes from across the room.
I got the impression that Amanda wasn’t looking for sympathy so much as someone to vent to. I liked her—but not enough to hang around with her wearing only a blanket. I figured Noah could take the lead on this one.
“I’m gonna go take a shower,” I said. “I have to be at work in a few hours anyway.”
“You want pancakes, Elle? I’m gonna make pancakes. Ooh! A waffle iron. I’m gonna make waffles.”
“You do you,” I told her. “I’ll eat anything.”
“I’ll have both,” Noah told her.
She whacked his knuckles lightly with the wooden spoon she’d just grabbed. “You’ll get what I make, pretty boy. So, anyway, then they start arguing about who gets custody of the wine club. The sodding wine club! Not me, theirdaughter,the wine club! And Mum only wants that so Dad will have to go somewhere else with the tart. Although she’s not really a tart. She’s my old Brownie leader. She’s quite lovely, really. And…”
Amanda’s rant faded out of earshot once I was in the bathroom. I felt bad for her, I really did. I decided my own rant about Linda that I’d been dying to talk to her about could wait. I’d told Noah about it all yesterday, and he’d been sympathetic enough to tide me over for a while.
Back in the kitchen, they’d moved on from Amanda’s parents’ looming divorce to talking about the house.
“…I know there’s kind of no point in cleaning things up if they’re only going to tear it down,” Noah was saying, “but not everyone who’s interested is a developer. Some of them just want to buy the beach house as it is. Or, you know, they say they do, but they keep canceling.”
“How do you know there are developers interested?” I asked him, pulling my wet hair into a bun. “Did your mom say something?”
“Lee told me.”
“How doesheknow?”
Noah gave me a flat look and said, “Elle, you know I don’t ask him questions I don’t want to hear the answers to.”
“Plausible deniability. I’m with you there.”
“He changed the number,” Amanda told us, clearly only half listening as she made me up a plate of waffles, smothering them in chopped fruit. “On the sign outside. It’s his phone number.”
“What part of ‘plausible deniability’ don’t you get?” Noah barked at her, but there was a playfulness to his scorn. He sighed, rubbing a knuckle between his eyes. “I should’ve guessed he’d pull a stunt like that.”
“You’re telling me you guys missed that? He’s your best friend! Andyourbrother! How did you not know that?”
Noah and I both pulled a face. “Uh, because his number hasn’t changed in about seven years?” I said. “There is no chance in hell I’d be able to tell you Lee’s cell number. I barely remember mine sometimes.”
Amanda shook her head at both of us. “What, and you guys thought the painter just canceled last week out of nowhere, and the guy coming to check the roof ‘forgot’ his ladder, and that every buyer wanting to view this place mysteriously changed their mind? And none of that was, like, at all suspicious? You guys are suchmorons.”
“Plausible deniability,” I repeated.
But hearing her lay it all out like that, I couldn’t say I was surprised. Lee had been against selling the beach house since the very start. This wasexactlythe kind of thing he would pull to stop it all going ahead.
(Plus, it wasn’t like I’d been around that much to really pay it a lot of attention.)
“You think we should talk to him?” Noah asked me.
“I’m not doing it,” Amanda said. She slid my breakfast in front of me. “I like the kid, but he’s not my problem.”
“That’s really gonna put me back in his good books.” I snorted, moping over my plate of waffles. “Yesterday I missed the trip to Berkeley, and now you want me to tell him to stop getting in the way of your parents selling the beach house? Nope. I like the kid, but he’s not my problem,” I said. “This one’s all yours.”
“Oh, great.Nowyou decide you’re not part of the family. What happened to ‘this beach house is just as much mine as it is yours’?”
I waved my fork at him dismissively. “This one’s all yours, Noah.”
